The Thai alphabet (Thai: อักษรไทย) (àk-sŏn tai) is used to write the Thai language and other minority languages in Thailand. It has forty-four consonants (Thai: พยัญชนะ) (pa-yan-cha-ná), fifteen vowel symbols (Thai: สระ) (sà-rà) that combine into at least twenty-eight vowel forms, and four tone marks (Thai: วรรณยุกต์ or วรรณยุต) (wan-na-yóok or wan-na-yóot). The Proto-Canaanite alphabet is an abjad of twenty-plus acrophonic glyphs, which is found in Levantine texts of the Late Bronze Age (from ca. ... The Phoenician alphabet dates from around 1400 BC and is related to the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. ... The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet is an offshoot of the Phoenician alphabet used to write the Hebrew language from about the 10th century BCE until it began to fall out of use in the 5th century BCE with the adoption of the Aramaic alphabet as a writing system for Hebrew and... Bilingual inscription (Greek and Aramaic) by the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great, 3rd century BC. The Aramaic alphabet is an abjad alphabet designed for writing the Aramaic language. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts. ... The Brahmic family is a family of abugidas (writing systems) used in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...   This article or section uses Khmer characters which may be rendered as boxes or other nonsensical symbols. ... Javanese script is the script that Javanese is originally written in (not to be confused with Javascript, which is a programming language). ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... 11th century book in Syriac Serto. ... The Nabatean alphabet is a consonantal alphabet (abjad) that was used by the Nabateans in the 2nd century BC. Important inscriptions are found in Petra. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing Arabic and various other languages, together with various closely related scripts that typically differ in the presence or absence of a few letters. ... The Pahlavi script was used broadly in the Sasanid Persian Empire to write down Middle Persian for secular, as well as religious purposes. ... The Avestan alphabet was created in the 3rd century AD for writing the hymns of Zarathustra (a. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Younger Futhark inscription on the Vaksala Runestone The Runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes, formerly used to write Germanic languages, mainly in Scandinavia and the British Isles, but before Christianization also on the European Continent. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ...   The Gothic alphabet is an alphabetic writing system attributed by Philostorgius to Wulfila, used exclusively for writing the ancient Gothic language. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced , also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages—Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the paleo-Hebrew variety of the Phoenician alphabet, the more commonly known Hebrew alphabet having been adapted from the Aramaic alphabet under the Persian Empire. ... Photograph of Botorrita 1 (both sides), 1st century BC. The Iberian scripts (or Iberian alphabet) are two scripts (or two styles of the same script) found on the Iberian peninsula, the Northeast and South Iberian script. ... The ancient South Arabian alphabet (also known as musnad) branched from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet in ca. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Meroitic script is an alphabet of Egyptian (Hieroglyphic) origin used in Kingdom of Meroë. Some scholars, e. ... Jamo redirects here. ... Zhuyin fuhao (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Tongyong Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chu-yin fu-hao), or Symbols for Annotating Sounds, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo (ㄅㄆㄇㄈ) after the first four letters of this Chinese phonemic alphabet (bo po mo fo), is the national phonetic system of the... Nearly all the segmental scripts (alphabets, but see below for more precise terminology) used around the globe were apparently derived from the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... The Thai language (Thai: , transcription: phasa thai; IPA: ), is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailands dominant ethnic group. ... A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a country. ...

• Consonants ฅ (Unicode U+0E3) and ฅ (Unicode U+0E5) are obsolete, but still appear on many keyboards and in character sets. See discussion below.
• Characters ฤ ฤๅ ฦ ฦๅ are also included in character sets. The first two are equivalent to รึ and รือ and follow ร in alphabetical order. The latter two are equivalents for ล but are obsolete and no longer used.

Consonants are written horizontally from left to right, with vowels arranged above, below, to the left or to the right of the corresponding consonant.

• This is an Abugida, so 'consonants' include an inherent vowel sound. Since Abugida is unfamiliar to most students, the inherent vowel is described as an implied 'a' or 'o', below.

Thai letters are neither minuscule nor majuscule. Texts are usually written with no space between words, which is facilitated by the fact that most Thai words have only one syllable. An abugida or alphasyllabary is a writing system composed of signs (graphemes) denoting consonants with an inherent following vowel, which are consistently modified to indicate other vowels (or, in some cases, the lack of a vowel). ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Letter case. ... Majuscules or capital letters (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. ...

• Minor pauses in sentences may be marked by a comma (Thai: จุลภาค or ลูกน้ำ) (djoon-la-pâak or lôok-náam), and major pauses by a period (Thai: มหัพภาค or จุด) (ma-hàp-pâak or djòot), but most often are marked by a blank space (Thai: วรรค) (wák).

Thai writing also uses quotation marks (Thai: อัญประกาศ) (an-yá-bprà-gàat) and parentheses (Thai: วงเล็บ (wong lép), but not brackets or braces. A bird's eye (Thai: ตาไก่) (dta-gài) (U+0E4F), officially called (Thai: ฟองมัน) (fong-man), formerly indicated paragraphs, but is obsolete.

Thai has its own set of Thai numerals (ตัวเลขไทย), but Hindu-Arabic numerals (ตัวเลขฮินดูอารบิก) are also commonly used. Thai numerals (ตัวเลขไทย) are traditionally used in Thailand, although the Arabic numerals (also known as Western numerals) are more common. ... Hindu-Arabic numerals also known as Arabic Numerals, Hindu numerals, European numerals, and Western numerals are the most common set of symbols used to represent numbers around the world. ...

History

Replica of the Ramkhamhaeng inscription, the oldest inscription using Thai script

The Thai alphabet is probably derived from the Old Khmer script (อักขระเขมร), which is a southern Brahmic style of writing called Vatteluttu. Vatteluttu was also commonly known as the Pallava script by scholars of Southeast Asian studies such as George Coedes. According to tradition it was created in 1283 by King Ramkhamhaeng the Great (พ่อขุนรามคำแหงมหาราช). ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x1544, 824 KB) Description: Ramkhamhaeng inscription in Sukhothai historical park Source: uploaders creation Date: date of uploading Author: uploader Permission: GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2. ... ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (1024x1544, 824 KB) Description: Ramkhamhaeng inscription in Sukhothai historical park Source: uploaders creation Date: date of uploading Author: uploader Permission: GFDL and CC-BY-SA-2. ...   This article or section uses Khmer characters which may be rendered as boxes or other nonsensical symbols. ... BrāhmÄ« refers to the pre-modern members of the Brahmic family of scripts, attested from the 3rd century BC. The best known and earliest dated inscriptions in Brahmi are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka. ... An example of the Vatteluttu script from an inscription by Rajaraja Chola I at the Brihadisvara temple in Thanjavur. ... Southeast Asian Studies refers to research and education on the culture and history of the different states and ethnic groups of Southeast Asia. ... George Coedës (1886-1969) spent his adult life filling in the spaces in Western knowledge of classical Southeast Asia. ... For broader historical context, see 1280s and 13th century. ... Statue of King Ramkhamhaeng Ramkhamhaeng the Great (c. ...

Alphabet listing

You will need a Unicode-capable browser and font that contains the Thai alphabet to view the Thai letters below.

Consonants

There are 44 consonants representing 21 distinct consonant sounds. Duplicate consonants represent different Sanskrit and Pali consonants pronounced identically in Thai. Their continued use is necessary to differentiate among unrelated loan-words which are Thai homophones. The consonants are divided into three classes - low, middle and high - which determine the tone of the following vowel. There are in addition four consonant-vowel combination characters not included in the tally of 44. The Sanskrit language ( , for short ) is an old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian Subcontinent, the classical literary language of the Hindus of India[1], a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 23 official languages of India. ... Pāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect or prakrit. ...

To aid learning, each consonant is traditionally associated with a Thai word that either starts with the same sound, or features it prominently. For example, the name of the letter ข is kho khai (ข ไข่), in which kho is the sound it represents, and khai (ไข่) is a word which starts with the same sound and means "egg".

Two of the consonants (kho khuat and kho khon) aren't used in written Thai anymore. Some say that when the first Thai typewriter was developed by Edwin Hunter McFarland in 1892, there was simply no space for all characters, thus two had to be left out. 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ...

Equivalents for Romanization are shown in the table below. Many consonants are pronounced differently at the beginning and at the end of a syllable. The entries in columns initial and final indicate the pronunciation for that consonant in the corresponding positions in a syllable. Where the entry is "-", the consonant may not be used to close a syllable. Where a combination of consonants ends a written syllable, only the first is pronounced; possible closing consonant sounds are limited to 'k', 'm', 'n', 'ng', 'p' and 't'.

Although an official standard for Romanisation is defined by the Royal Thai Institute, many publications use different Romanisation systems. In daily practice, a bewildering variety of Romanisations are used, making it difficult to know how to pronounce a word, or to judge if two words (e.g. on a map and a street sign) are actually the same. For more precise information, an equivalent from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is given as well. Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ...

Each consonant is assigned to a "class" (Low, Middle, High), which plays a role in determining the tone with which the syllable is pronounced.

* Consonant-vowel combination characters, not members of any group. Kho Khuat (ฃ (ขวด)) is the third letter in the Thai alphabet. ...

** อ is a special case in that at the beginning of a word it is used as a silent initial for syllables that start with a vowel (all vowels are written relative to a consonant — see below). The same symbol is used as a vowel in non-initial position.

Vowels

Thai vowel sounds and diphthongs are written using a mixture of vowel symbols, consonants, and combinations of vowel symbols. Each vowel is shown in its correct position relative to an initial consonant (indicated by a dash "–") and sometimes a final consonant as well (second dash). Note that vowels can go above, below, left of or right of the consonant, or combinations of these places. If a vowel has parts before and after the initial consonant, and the syllable starts with a consonant cluster, the split will go around the whole cluster.

The pronunciation is indicated by the International Phonetic Alphabet and the Romanisation according to the Royal Thai Institute as well as several variant Romanisations often encountered. A very approximate equivalent in Northeastern US English is given.

For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words see here. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

* vowels or diphthongs written with consonant symbols

Diacritics

Each mark is shown in its correct location relative to the consonant ko kai. The names of the tones are derived from the numbers one, two, three and four in an Indic language. The Indo-Aryan languages form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, thus belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. ...

Other symbols

Thai in computing

TIS-620 is the best-established character set and character encoding for the Thai alphabet. TIS-620 has been adopted verbatim in the Unicode range for Thai, U+0E00 ... U+0E7F. Thai Industrial Standard 620-2533, commonly referred to as TIS-620, is the most common character set and character encoding for the Thai language. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ...

See also

• Royal Thai General System of Transcription
• Thai language
• Thai language: Script: Transliteration
• Thai numerals
• Thailand

Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... The Thai language (Thai: , transcription: phasa thai; IPA: ), is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailands dominant ethnic group. ... The Thai language (Thai: , transcription: phasa thai; IPA: ), is the national and official language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailands dominant ethnic group. ... Thai numerals (ตัวเลขไทย) are traditionally used in Thailand, although the Arabic numerals (also known as Western numerals) are more common. ...

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Thai pronunciation

Thai alphabet edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Omniglot - Thai
• Virtual Thai KeyboardFreeware
• [http://www.thai2english.com On-line Thai <> English Dictionary